Friday, January 19, 2007

A PITIFUL THING LIKE AN OAT

When he started out he prayed, "Dear God, I want to be an artist." And he heard an answer: "Yes, be an artist." Then at the end of his life he thought perhaps he had erred. He said, "Dear God, I poured everything I had into making pictures! How lamentable, how short-sighted, how wasteful." And again he heard an answer: "Yes, how lamentable, how short-sighted, how wasteful."

Now children, if you've enjoyed this little story I'd like to make a suggestion: sell everything you have and make the journey, quick as a rat, to Angouleme where the picture shown above will be on display as part of a large exhibition of JW's comics and drawings at the CNBDI as part of the annual International Comics Festival, Jan 24 - 28. You will see in this picture, and in others such as The Holy Land and Dialog at Eleusis, that the case against art is being powerfully built up even as the ice caps melt and polar bears drown.

I hope to make posts to this "blog" from France if the technology allows. In the event no such posts are made, and in light of the fact that so few have been made recently, well, I apologise. The temporal dream is fading and it is harder and harder to retain scraps of it. Yes, that mittenful of snow is fast becoming a memory. A small, meaningless memory.

About Me

I was born in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California and enjoyed an exciting childhood full of poetry and paroniria among the snakes, rats and tarantulas of that enchanted realm. I eventually grew into an inquisitive bearlike man who has had three exciting careers; garbage collector, merry-go-round-operator and cartoonist. Some of my work is collected in THE BOOK OF JIM, THE FRANK BOOK and SEEING THINGS (all published by Fantagraphics) and in various toys, fabrics, prints and urban legends. Thank you for your interest.